All The Whos in Whomville

My guilty pleasure these last couple of days has been reading Scott Turow's sequel to Presumed Innocent. The new book, Innocent, bounces back and forth in time, with the chapters alternating among the perspectives of different narrators--a gimmick I would normally find annoying, but it seems to work here.

On Page 20, we get this call-back to the first novel:

Twenty-two years later, the name of the chief judge of the court of appeals, who Tommy had unsuccessfully prosecuted for murdering a female colleague of theirs, still coursed through him like the current after the insertion of a plug.

Thank you, Basil Exposition. But now we have to get into the dreaded who/whom discussion--a grammatical sub-genre in itself, the contemplation of which has been known to cause testicular cancer in rats.

To put it in overly-simplistic terms: We are obliged to use who when we're talking about the subject of a preposition or verb (the person doing the doing) and whom with an object (the person being done to). A neat trick that works in most instances is to substitute he or him. You may have to move the words around a bit, but if he fits, you're dealing with a subject; if him is the obvious choice, you've got an object on your hands and whom is the way to go. In the sentence above, Tommy is doing the doing (prosecuting) which makes him the subject. And we know we wouldn't say "Tommy had unsuccessfully prosecuted he." That means the chief judge is the object and it should be whom.


Granted, it's not always that simple. On Page 64, for instance, I came across this sentence, which caused my brain to spin in its cranial cavity for a moment:

What is wrong with a woman, whom in almost every other regard I know to be gifted and refreshingly sane, that she would be interested in someone nearly twice her age, let alone married?

At first I thought that sounded wrong--that since she is gifted and sane it should be the subjective who. But eventually I came to realize that he knows her to be these things, so the objective case is correct. I think. I read it over a few times, then I poured another drink and pushed forward.

I didn't have to go far, however, before I came to an arresting example of how you sometimes have to disregard these rules entirely--when being wrong is the right thing to do. Further on in the paragraph comes this:

But I will probably never understand the secret part of her she hopes I might fill in. Who she wants to be in the law? Who she wishes her father was?

Using the rules outlined above, shouldn't it be "Whom she wants to be...?" and "Whom she wishes her father was?" Yes and no. Let's give the last word to legendary humorist James Thurber:

The number of people who use "who" and "whom" wrong is appalling. Take the common expression, "Whom are you, anyways?" That is, of course, strictly speaking, correct--and yet how formal, how stilted! The usage to be preferred in ordinary speech and writing is "Who are you, anyways?" "Whom" should be used only when a note of dignity or austerity is desired. For example, if a writer is dealing with a meeting of, say, the British Cabinet, it would be better to have the Premier greet a new arrival, such as an under-secretary, with a "Whom are you, anyways?" rather than a "Who are you, anyways?" --always granted that the Premier is sincerely unaware of the man's identity. To address a person one knows by a "Whom are you?" is a mark either of incredible lapse of memory or inexcusable arrogance.

Poor Bill

No error here. Just thought it was funny.

What's Your Poison?

A wire service report today informs us that Crystal Head vodka--a spirit distilled in Newfoundland under the auspices of owner Dan Ackroyd--is unwelcome in Ontario liquor stores. The rationale for the ban, as reported in the piece, is that...

...its distinctive, skull-shaped bottle is an image associated with death, poison and could become popular with young, binge drinkers, according to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

As much as it is reassuring to have the nanny state of Ontario looking out for the interests of our apprentice alcoholics (most of whom are drinking "hard" lemonade, for chrissakes), I take issue with the comma-flinging in that sentence. First of all, although it is not strictly necessary, losing the second comma and making it "death and poison," with a trailing comma, would make for a more euphonious construction. And those are "young binge drinkers," thank you very much, not "young, binge drinkers."

The Case of the 400-Dollar Hyphen

I don't want to keep picking on the notices Abby brings home from school, but take a look at this:

First of all, the header. There is more than one community school in District #43, so by rights that should be Community Schools'. Or should it? Maybe that's supposed to be an apostrophe-less plural and not a possessive at all. It's hard to tell, because the opening sentence begins with "Our Community School's are pleased to offer...", a clear case of an apostrophe poking its way into a plural, so forgive me for being non-plussed.

But the bigger issue is the misplaced hyphen. A niggling detail, you say? Not at all. These summer day camps are being offered at 80 bucks a pop, so at first glance it seems like quite the deal for six weeks of kid-storage.  Alas, as the ensuing details make clear, these are not SIX-WEEK LONG camps. They are, rather, SIX WEEK-LONG camps, at 80 dollars per.

I could probably be persuaded to spill 80 beans for a summer-long program, but for five days of producing papier mache puppets and finger paintings? I'd rather spend the money doubling down on the Merlot and just muddle through the week. Anyway, the point is, that is one misleading hyphen.

Point Taken

My wife and I got vaccinated this afternoon. There's been a recent outbreak of measles, and the school sent home an advisory recommending shots for those not previously inoculated.

While awaiting our turn at the health center, my eyes alighted on a pamphlet entitled HELPING YOUR CHILD WITH NEEDLE FEAR. I'm eager for advice on this, because the last time Abby had to have a blood test, she shrieked and flailed with alarming wild-eyed intensity and eventually had to be restrained like a jonesing heroin addict. (I guess the analogy doesn't really hold up, since a heroin addict wants a needle, but you know what I mean.)

Interestingly, my "2 Rs" method of dealing with the situation--ridicule and rebuke--is not in fact the recommended approach, at least according to this document. They suggest that I show understanding for my child's feelings and acknowledge her fear. Furthermore...

Express faith in your child's ability to cope: "I know this is hard, still, I think you can handle it."

What we have here is that pet bugaboo of English teachers everywhere--the comma splice. That's when two independent clauses (clauses that could stand alone as sentences) are feebly joined with a comma. The fix? Either insert a coordinating conjunction ("I know this is hard, but still, I think you can handle it.") or make it two sentences, each with its own terminating punctuation ("I know this hard. Still, I think you can handle it.")

Moments after pondering this, I was called in for my shot and--sonofabitch!--that needle stung. Still, I didn't even cry or anything. And the sticker and lollipop was a nice reward.

Reach Out and Annoy Someone

Sam and I went to McDonald's for lunch today (he had a Happy Meal, I had the Ennui Meal) and while Sam was busy upending his beverage on the floor, I leafed idly through the ketchup-stained 24 Hours commuter rag the last patron left behind.

In an advice column to job-seekers called HRinmotion (you can tell they're in motion because they don't have time to put spacing in their name), readers are counseled to refrain from following up an unsolicited resume with an unsolicited call:

Employers receive hundreds of resumes daily or weekly, so to expect them to take a call and know about your resume is virtually impossible.

I think they mean the taking of the call and the knowing about your resume are virtually impossible. To expect that, however, is within the realm of possibility, even if it is misguided. But let's continue...

I understand the job-market is dry and job-seekers can get anxious. But let's be reasonable: You are making a solicitation call. Similar to a telemarketer, most employers do not have the time to take a call or respond to a message in their day-to-day schedule.

That opening clause in the last sentence is not just misplaced, it seems to have wandered in from a neighboring county. Or at least from the preceding sentence. It is you, after all, the feckless and delusional job-seeker, and not the poor beleaguered employer with the day-to-day schedule, who is being compared to a telemarketer.

Is Our Children Learning?

Idol Thoughts

The Daily Beast website runs a breathlessly speculative piece today about who might replace Simon Cowell on American Idol. I haven't actually read the article--I  had a one-year flirtation with the show that is long over--but I have a nit to pick with the sub-heading blurb:

With the weak American Idol season ending soon, Richard Rushwell places odds on who will be cast to restore the show to post-Cowell glory.

As far as I know, Cowell has been doing his cranky tell-it-like-it-is shtick on the panel since the show's inception. How then can the show be "restored" to an era of glory (a post-Cowell era) it has not heretofore enjoyed?

As Randy Jackson would say, it's a little pitchy, Dawg.

By the way, the year I watched, Melinda Doolittle so deserved to win.

He Followed Me Home...Can I Keep Him?

The SPCA, in a shameless attempt to cause civil unrest in my home, has sent my daughter, Abby, a 4-color bi-fold brochure on the joys of guinea pig ownership. That's what you get when you let your kid make contributions toward funding the reproductive mutilation of furry critters at Bob Barker's urging. Abby's donations earned her a spot on the organization's propaganda mailing list, hence the guinea pig promotion, which features this historical tidbit:

A few hundred years ago when European explorers traveled to South America, they returned home with guinea pigs. Because of their affectionate nature, they soon became popular pets in both Europe and North America.

When it comes to creating unintentional humor, the ambiguous antecedent is second only to the dangling participle in its capacity to pull the pin on a linguistic grenade. In this case, because the subject of the first sentence is "European explorers," the reader is led to assume that those same explorers constitute the "they" of the succeeding sentence, and, for a moment at least, is treated to the image of an intrepid (but affectionate) seafaring adventurer being kept in a sawdust-strewn habitat for the amusement of children and eccentric adults.

Feeling All Atwitter

The young lady depicted here--she of the minimalist approach to fashion--is my new friend. Nay, not just a friend--a follower, which I suppose makes me a leader in the L. Ron Hubbard sense of the word. Let me explain.

I have recently re-discovered Twitter and the joy of sharing inane insights and mundane minutia in 140-character-or-less bursts (see my newly-added sidebar to the right for up-to-the-second updates). But one of the dangers of becoming an online celebrity is that one begins to attract a fanatical following.

Take happybaboo69332, pictured above. A new message in my inbox tells me that she is now following me. The fact that I don't know happybaboo69322, and that her profile indicates she is a promiscuous and indiscriminate follower and spammer, doesn't put me off. Most of my followers are anonymous spammers. What puts me off is her tweets, the two most recent of which I share verbatim:

Had a great & funny evenig (sic) wtih (sic) the grils (sic), wnonderful (sic)! :))

And in case you're wondering who "the grils" are:

don't wnat (sic) to suond (sic) lkie (sic) a perv...But I love tihs (sic) new victoria sceret (sic) bra I invested in..."mirauclous (sic) psuh (sic) up"...all gilrs (sic) shuold (sic) get it.. (sic)

I'm sorry, happybaboo69322--if that is your real name--but I'm just not interested in tkaing tihs realtionship to teh nxet levle.

A Donner Party Dessert

Oh, what a difference an apostrophe can make. Bryan, a friend from Scottsdale (and a renowned baseball bloggist) sends along this disturbing image from a local farmer's market:

If you don't believe Hallie, just try having a couple of grandmas with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

One Fish, Two Fish, Drunk Fish, Puff Fish

Someone on the staff of the Province was having fun yesterday.

On Page A16 of today's paper is a story about an enthusiastic imbiber of spirits named Richard Laurie who says he got drunk in a bar and accepted an offer from a stranger named Tyler to drive him home in his--Richard's--truck. Truck crashes into parked car, the mysterious Tyler flees, and ICBC (the fascistic Insurance Corporation of British Columbia) refuses to cover the damages, alleging that Richard was driving drunk and that Tyler is a bad work of fiction. A judge, however, rules against the evil empire of ICBC, saying they failed to prove these allegations. 

No grammatical violations to report in the piece, but I was amused by the whimsical rhyming headline:

On the same page, below this story, we have the tale of the counterfeit cigarette smugglers (the cigarettes were counterfeit, that is; the smugglers themselves appear to have been genuine). It seems the crafty criminals secreted the cartons of fraudulent butts in a shipment of kitchen sinks arriving by sea from China, but were nabbed by sharped-eyed Customs officers.

The headline for this story?

I think someone in the headline-writing department has been channeling Dr. Suess.

Presumed Guilty

Several years ago, my brother burned down his apartment. Not intentionally, mind you, but it was clearly a result of his negligence--a blanket draped over a lamp ignited while he slept--and while, thankfully, there was no loss of life (although his cat went missing), the damage was considerable. Squads of urgent firefighters and TV news crews were dispatched to the scene, and a number of tenants in the building were displaced from their homes in the days before Christmas. It says something about Mark that his culpability for this conflagration ranks no higher than fifth on the list of extraordinary episodes in his life--well behind his ill-fated marriage to the call girl and his triumphant evasion of conviction on a parking ticket by showing up in traffic court wearing an ambulance service uniform he found at a Salvation Army thrift store.

I digress. The reason all this comes to mind is that Scott Turow has a new novel out--it's just been released today, in fact. It's called Innocent, and it is a sequel to the mega-seller of the 80's, Presumed Innocent. That's right, the one that was made into the movie with Harrison Ford. The one that was Scott Turow's breakthrough first novel. The one that I had in a pristine first edition copy that I loaned to my brother Mark in the days before he set fire to his home.

I digress again. Thanks to Amazon's "Look Inside!" feature (and what's with the hyperventilating exclamation point?), I was able this evening to take a sneak peak at the opening pages of Innocent, and on the first page I find this:

The stately appellate courtroom is largely empty of spectators, save for...several young deputy PAs, drawn by a difficult case and the fact that their boss, the acting prosecuting attorney, Tommy Molto, will be making a rare appearance up here to argue in behalf of the state.

Objection, your honor! If it please the court, I offer this testimony from noted language guy Bill Bryson:

A useful distinction exists between on behalf of and in behalf of. The first means acting as a representative, as when a lawyer enters a plea on behalf of a client, and often denotes a formal relationship. In behalf of indicates a closer or more sympathetic role and means acting as a friend or defender.

Using these definitions, I think it is pretty clear that a prosecuting attorney is arguing on behalf of the state. And no matter how I might want to equivocate in behalf of my brother, a second-hand thrift store 10th edition inscribed to some ingrate who donated the gift to charity is just not adequate compensation for my loss.

I have no further questions. You may step down.

The Year of the Apostrophe

This school year is still in session for several more weeks, but already we're getting notices to prepare us for Abby's ascension to Grade 2, like this one pimping complete school supply kits for next fall.

[click to enlarge]

First of all, the sub-literate name Edu-Pac  (unworthy of a school-sponsored enterprise, if you ask me) is inconsistently given the quotation mark treatment. Here, but not there, and in one instance with an opening quotation mark and a drafty breeze where the closing one should go. In that same instance, Pac's is garnished with a superfluous apostrophe. Then there is that sub-heading (cradled by needless quotation marks)--with the awkward frustration shopping wording that invites mis-reading. And we won't even get into the cheesy clip-art design.

But let's take a closer look at that third paragraph:

In addition to the basic package, you may select the individual items your student requires or reuse last years.

Since years are not reusable, we can only assume they mean the items from last year, or last year's items. That makes it a possessive and that means now is the time to bring that apostrophe into service.

That may not be a particularly interesting error--or even the worst one on that flyer--but it stood out for me because just this morning I saw a similar slip-up, but in reverse. In recounting the stunning victory by the local hockey heroes in Game 1 of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Province reporter Jason Botchford enthused:

This isn't the dump-and-chase Canucks of season's past.

So true*. But here, seasons past is just a poetic way of saying past seasons. No apostrophes need apply.

*And as someone who finds the dump-and-chase strategy to be the most vulgar abomination in hockey--a caveman approach that negates the displays of speed and finesse that make the sport great--and who is known to become apoplectic when his team does it on the power play (!)--I can only say, Hallelujah.

But in Nine Months You'll Have a Baby Brother

I think that should be "I'm hearing my parents having sex." Nevertheless... yeah, I suppose that is disgusting.

Their Error Liveth Forevermore

Our charming little town square in Port Coquitlam is home to our City Hall, the smartly-designed new Leigh Square Arts Centre, a Starbucks (natch), and an idyllic park space featuring this monument to fallen World War II vets:

My first thought is that there is an astonishingly large number of names on this honor roll, given the very modest size of this community at mid-20th century. A loss this big would almost literally have decimated the town's population--a reality of the time that is often lost on us post-war baby boomers.

There is something else about this monument that caught my attention. You'll notice that the names proceed in stately alphabetical order from Baker to Zappia--with the curious exception of W. Kravac, which has inexplicably been inserted at the end of the first column between  Lonsdale and McTavish. You'll also note that there is already a W. Krivac memorialized here.

I have a theory here. I can't prove it of course, but I suspect that the engravers finished the job, only to discover (or had it pointed out to them by an aggrieved relative) that they had chiseled in W.Kravac's name incorrectly. The only solution then, since they couldn't very well erase the error, was simply to add the correct rendering at the bottom of the scroll.

Nowadays, where so much of our lives is recorded digitally, mistakes are easy to override. No white-out, no XXXs--just a few keystrokes and all is forgiven. After all, it's not written in stone. In this case, however...

Of Mice and Wrenches

 It started with a little rustling sound. I was sitting at the dining-room table, with an eye-opening cup of joe and the morning tabloid, when I heard a muffled rattle from the wine cabinet in the corner of the room. A half-hour later, I hear it again and mention it to Kim.

"It's like there's a mouse in there," I say, and describe the noises I've heard.

"No," she says, "it's just a truck going by that rattles the glassware."

Later in the morning, I'm at work in the den, when I hear it again--the rustle, the rattle, and this time the arresting sound of glasses tipping over. I come out to investigate, turn the corner and pinwheel to a sliding stop. There I stand, eye to beady eye with a furry brown mouse. He's crouched among the cabernet glasses, staring me down, his nose twitching menacingly. I do what any red-blooded man would do. I shriek like a little girl, tear back to the den, slam the door, and call Kim to tell her she has to come home right away because there's a mouse in the house.

Now, this might seem to indicate a woeful lack of testosterone on my part. Not so fast. Here's where the story takes a turn that almost makes it relevant to the theme of this blog and at the same time restores a measure of manhood to my self-image. While sequestered in the den awaiting rescue, I flipped nervously through the Encarta World English Dictionary on my book stand and happened to spot this entry:

What is depicted here, as any handyman worth his over-exposed butt crack knows, is an adjustable crescent wrench, or so I have always believed. Indeed, a quick query to the Google gods confirms that a monkey wrench looks like this:

Granted, I have not actually used either instrument--at least not successfully--but I think I deserve at least a couple of manly man points for my display of tool-spotting acumen.

As for the mouse situation, the little rodent made its way into a drawer of my nightstand, as I discovered with sphincter-tightening alarm during the night, and Kim eventually repatriated the vicious little beast to the great outdoors. On Sunday, however, Caesar, our homicidal cat, inexplicably lunged at a cabinet in Abby's room, which led me (or rather, led Abby, who investigated while I cowered outside her door) to discover another twitchy-nosed interloper.

I'm moving to a hotel until this situation is resolved.

The Lanaguage of the Tea Party

Sic List, The Next Generation

What can I say? I'm so proud.

Tonight, my little first-grader, Abby, was reading to me from a book she checked out of her school library. A few pages into the epic page-turner "Biscuit Finds a Friend," we come upon this:

Pretty exciting, no? Anyway, after reading this passage, Abby looked up at me.

"That doesn't sound right, does it?"

By gosh, she's right. That doesn't sound right. But I needed some help from my old friend, the Interwebs, to isolate the problem. Using "there is" as a stand-in for "here is," I find this:

In my neighborhood there is an outdoor swimming pool and two parks. In my neighborhood there are an outdoor swimming pool and two parks.
If the first noun in the list of things is singular, use there is. And if the first noun is plural, are is then the verb to use, as evidenced by the next page in "Biscuit Finds a Friend": And that's all there is to say. Quack! Quack!

This Ain't No Place for the Pedantic Kind

I have to admit that I am pathetically out of the loop when it comes to new music. My iPod is loaded with chatty podcasts, and when I do listen to tunes I tend to fall back on Sgt. Pepper and classic Dire Straits.

That's why, when the musical guest--usually some cacophonous group of dirty hippies--is introduced on a talk show, I power down the sound and pick up a book. Recently, however, (I think it was on Letterman or Craig Ferguson), I found myself enraptured by the raspy, plaintive wails of a soulful singer singing a beautiful sad song. I thumbed up the volume on the remote and sat there in a semi-drunk reverie. Eventually I realized it was the feature track from the movie Crazy Heart (haven't seen it yet, but have heard great things about it and the soundtrack).

Anyway, here's the song:



Lyrics | Ryan Bingham - The Weary Kind lyrics

So why have I cited it on this blog? Well, I could point out the lack of apostrophes throughout the lyrics, or how "you rolled them sevens with nothing lose" should, of course, be "to lose." But really, I just wanted an excuse to listen again to what I think is a beautiful sad song.

Botulism Burgers to Go

Yesterday's balmy spring weather put me in the mind of barbecue*, so I evicted the spiders from the Weber (no relation), gave it a good scrubbing and set about to enjoy the season's first propane-fueled cookout.

After the flame whooshed to life, I pried apart the solid pucks of turkey burgers (yeah, yeah, we bought frozen burgers--sometimes there just isn't time to create from scratch) and found this confounding direction on the package:

Cook 6 to 7 minutes on both sides.

Does that mean I should cook the burgers on both sides for a total of 6 to 7 minutes? Or should it be: "Cook 6 to 7 minutes on each side"? This isn't just an exercise in semantic navel-gazing; in this case, getting it right can spell the difference between enjoying an evenly-cooked al fresco repast and playing host to a plague of malicious pathogens.

As it turns out, I decided to err on the side of intestinal rectitude, so my buddy Sam and I flame-grilled those suckers (on both sides, for about 8 minutes each) until they begged for mercy. And a great time, with much high-fiving and lip smacking, ensued:

*Let's note here that there is some controversy about the word barbecue. Many people insist it can refer only to slow-cooked beef or pork, and that there is a distinction between barbecuing and grilling. I think these are the same people who like to point out that 12:01 a.m. is actually morning and not night.


Then there is the matter of spelling. Bryson says: "Any formal user of English who believes the word is spelled barbeque or, worse still, bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment." I was mortified on reading that, as it came to mind that I had spelled it barbeque in a recent project for a client. I won't say anything if you don't.

Floppy, Come Home

Apparently the wheelbarrow didn't have sentimental value. 

Homeland Security

I just ordered room service here at the Xona Resort Suites (nine greenbacks for a desiccated chicken sandwich and another nine for a niggardly plastic cup of down-market cabernet), and after hanging up the phone I scanned the "For Your Safety" section at the front of the menu book. It begins thusly:

When in your room, double lock the door by turning the deadbolt and securing the door latch. This will prevent the door from being opened by a regular key and insure your privacy. Please make sure you lock all the doors leading to the patio and insure the security bar is placed on the sliding glass door as well. Then lock yourself in the bathroom with a shotgun and put on Kevlar pajamas and a combat helmet.

All right, so I made up the last bit. Still, the idea of fortifying the room in such a fashion while I'm in it really harshes my Arizona mellow. Roving bands of regular-key-wielding bandits be damned, I'm going to continue to leave the window open and wander out onto the patio in my underpants.

But onto the parsing. Yes, double lock as a verb needs a hyphen. But we've had enough hyphen talk lately. What really bumps me here is the use of insure in this context, rather than ensure. There is a lot of boring debate about how much overlap and interchangeability there can be between the two. Everyone agrees that insure is the word to use when talking about liability issues and insurance protection, but most dictionaries grant a second definition of "to make sure." I like ensure in this instance, though, for the simple reason that I like having different words mean different things. Why should insure, which has plenty to do, what with all those Allstate policies, encroach on ensure's turf? I say we close the sliding glass door between these etymological cousins and ensure the security bar is in place.

You're Like Me! You're Really, Really Like Me!

I got to spend a few idle moments today cruising the aisles of a Barnes and Noble. (This particular B&N was in the Kierland Commons area of Scottsdale--a shopping enclave patronized in large part by extravagantly-coiffed "kept women" of a certain age with preternatural tans and designer-brand face-lifts. I always feel conspicuously like a hideous troll when I go there.)

Passing by a display table, my eyes alight on this colorful little tome:

As it happens I have played a significant role in making two people--my daughter and my son--who are a lot like me in many ways. And I'm actually somewhat proud to say that in each case my part in the process took (a little) longer than 90 seconds.

Up in the Air

I'm spending the balance of the week in Scottsdale, Arizona (where the landscape is like a Roadrunner cartoon come to life), which means I spent today enduring the "glamor" of modern air travel: having to remove my shoes and belt like a new prisoner about to be deloused, stepping into a full-body scanner that gave me a close-up look at the polyps in my urethra, being subjected to the charms of U.S. border agents, and having to show my boarding pass every few feet to another bored bureaucrat. Finally, after being "processed," I retreat to the safety of the bar in the departure lounge, and take a glance at my ticket:

Sorry for the fuzziness (that's the best still my Flip camcorder can capture). So what's the error here? This ticket stub indicates that the departure time is--get this--2:29 p.m. That's right--not 2:30, not 2:45, but precisely 2:29 p.m.

The aircraft, as it turns out, was actually taxiing* to the runway at about 2:40--a fact I could verify by showing camera footage of the clock on my cell phone, were it not for the fact that activating a cell phone and camera on take-off would get me swiftly tackled by overzealous air marshals and subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" involving an unlubricated mop handle.

Anyway...I'm not complaining about the late departure--I was in no particular hurry, and in any case we arrived on time in the desert. I'm just bumfuzzled by the hubris of airlines announcing these oddly-specific departure times, as if we were counting down to a space launch, when in fact any veteran flyer knows that you're lucky if you come within 20 minutes of the declared wheels-up time.

*Just wondering: is there another English word, other than skiing, that features a double i?

Babysitter Gets Suspended Sentence

Last week, Abby brought home from school a flyer pitching after-school classes. The description of one of the courses, for Babysitter's Training, was maggoty with errors, including this concluding advisory:

Bring a nut and candy free lunch

Without the help of some hyphens, this sentence is open to misinterpretation. Should I bring a single nut, along with a lunch that is free of candy? A free lunch consisting of nuts and candy? Neither, actually, because, as a middle-aged dad who is most emphatically not a babysitter, I won't be attending at all.

In any case, the construction to be used here is
"a nut- and candy-free lunch."* That's right--with this baby, you get not just the gratifying clarity of employing hyphens, but also the spine-tingling frisson of satisfaction that comes from firing off a suspended hyphen, which, as we all know, is the most exciting hyphen of all.

Earlier in the description, there is another missing hyphen, when we are advised that participants receive a "personalized wallet size completion card," but I'm inclined to let that one go simply because I was amused by the image of a 12-year-old pig-tailed kid flipping open her Hello Kitty wallet with a dramatic flourish to flash her official Babysitter's Training credentials.

*Note the space after the first hyphen and the absence of a hyphen following and.

Thanks for the Heads-Up...

...and once again, everyday should be two words.

Don't be Such an Anxious Beaver

My wife doesn't often present me with unexpected gifts (my latest respiratory virus notwithstanding), so I was delighted when she picked up for me the Modern Library edition of Letters From The Editor, a compilation of communications from the New Yorker's brilliant founding editor, Harold Ross. Sure, she got it at a thrift store for 99 cents, but it's the meager thought that counts. In any case, I find myself dipping into it for awhile most nights to transport myself to Jazz-era New York and a time when a magazine and its editor were regarded with the kind of reverence we now reserve for the likes of Paris Hilton.

Within the milky-smooth pages of the volume (thank you, Modern Library, for your attention to tactile detail), in a letter to longtime New Yorker contributer Alexander Woollcott, a brusque and comically distracted Ross tells Woollcott he's going to try to visit soon, signing off with:

I don't know how to get to Vermont, or to the lake after I get there, but will take this matter up later. I am very anxious to see you.                                                                           Sincerely,                                                                           Ross

I know that anxious, over time, has in many quarters become an acceptable synonym for eager, but the fact remains that many usage mavens--Bryson; Bernstein; Garner; Barbara Wallraff; the American Heritage Dictionary; my high school English teacher, Mrs. Thompson--will point out that the word derives from anxiety and is best used when an element of worry or trepidation, and not merely anticipation, is involved. Considering that the above missive comes from the famously punctilious Harold Ross of the famously punctilious New Yorker, I feel justified in taking the legendary editor to task. Luckily for him, he's been dead for sixty years, and has mercifully escaped the sting of my critical lash.

A Site for Soar Ayes

The New Republic dispatched renowned linguist John McWhorter to go deep into the mind of Sarah Palin in an attempt to puzzle out her, shall we say, distinctive speech patterns. He emerged covered in sticky rhetorical goo but with a reasonably enlightening analysis. At one point, though, he compares Palin's stream-of-unconsciousness prattle with Joe Biden's equally folksy, but more coherent, syntax by capturing this quote of Biden's from their debate:

Barack Obama laid out four basic criteria for any kind of rescue plan. He said there has to be oversight. We're not going to write a check to anybody unless there's some kind of oversite of the Secretary of the Treasury.

How is it that he gets oversight correct in the first instance, but not in the next sentence? And how does the editor/proofreader not catch that? And why does someone like me come along and snarkily point out what is obviously just a simple (ahem) oversight? We'll never know.

But that's not all. In this morning's Vancouver Sun recap of last night's Canucks game, reporter Iain MacIntyre, commenting on the less-than-stellar performance of the local team's defense, says that:

The Canucks, minus Ehrhoff and Mitchell, were not an encouraging site in their zone.

To be fair, MacIntyre is usually an astonishingly graceful prose stylist for a sports beat reporter, and I think we can attribute this lapse to deadline pressure. In any case, he's a darn sight more literate than Mrs. "I-can-see-Russia-from-my-porch."

The One and Only

My brother dropped by for a visit the other day with his two-year-old daughter. My two kids were home with me at the time, and Mark and I "enjoyed" an afternoon of monitoring the movements of three boisterous young children, which is kind of like herding fish. Before leaving, Mark presented us with a parting gift: a sleek black electric kettle. Evidently, he had come across an enticing sale at a discount store and had loaded up on them because, hey, everyone loves a kettle.

I've always been a stove-top man myself, but I have to say I have been impressed with the electric kettle's brisk efficiency. I was, however, stopped short by the first commandment in the user manual:

• USE WATER ONLY IN THE KETTLE

You mean I can't use water anywhere else? Not even to wash the chocolate cookie detritus off the kids' faces before their mom gets home? Of course, that's not what they mean at all. What they mean is that I am advised to "use only water" in the kettle, as opposed to, say, coffee, beer, or liquid nitrogen.

Only is one of those slippery modifiers that needs to stay close to the word it's modifying (and in the right sequence), or else it can end up changing the meaning of the sentence, as neatly evidenced in this little tutorial I found online, which is attributed to the ever-prolific Anonymous.

"She told me that she loved me." Let us count the ways:

"Only she told me that she loved me." (No one else has told me that.)
"She only told me that she loved me." (Provided no evidence of her love.)
"She told only me that she loved me." (Not the gabby type.)
"She told me only that she loved me." (She had nothing more to say.)
"She told me that only she loved me." (Sad, hearing no one else loves me.)
"She told me that she only loved me." (Doesn't idolize me, but loves me.)
"She told me that she loved me only." (Ahhh!)


Would that all slippery words came with such a concise flash-card guide. If only.

Master-Baiting

Too often, I use this blog to take cheap shots at usage errors committed by those for whom mastering Standard English is a struggle. This makes me a pedantic ass. Today, however, I'm going to take a cheap shot at someone whose understanding of, and abilities with, the English language far exceeded what I could ever hope to accomplish in many lifetimes. Plus, he's tragically and prematurely dead. This makes me a captious little weasel.

I was listening to one of those Slate podcasts when the subject of usage issues in general, and David Foster Wallace's piece "Authority and American Usage" in particular, came up. This led me to pull down the collection Consider the Lobster, in which that essay is contained, pour myself a glass of wine, and spend a Sunday afternoon blissfully immersed in the strange and wonderful mind of DFW as he picked apart prescriptive vs. descriptive arguments in the usage wars.

Early on in the piece, in one of those discursive footnotes he was so famous for, he apologizes for using the phrase "historical context" and writes:

One of the personal little lessons I've learned in working on this essay is that being chronically inclined to sneer/wince at other people's usage tends to make me chronically anxious about other people sneering/wincing at my usage.

I perfectly understand the fear of being caught with one's syntactical fly open--and I promise I did not sneer or wince when I came upon this sentence, in which Wallace is analyzing an excerpt from Bryan A. Garner's preface to A Dictionary of Modern American Usage:

Whole monographs could be written just on the masterful rhetoric of this passage.

Normally, this wouldn't be worth mentioning (and probably still isn't), but given Wallace's hyper-vigilance when it comes to word selection, I think I'll just point out what Bill Bryson (who is also quoted in Wallace's piece) has to say in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words:

masterful, masterly. Most authorities continue to insist that we observe a distinction between these two--namely that masterly should apply to that which is adroit and expert and masterful to that which is imperious and domineering.

True, Bryson goes on to note that no leading dictionary insists on the distinction, and that indeed masterly is often an awkward choice of adverb, but he still observes that "masterly should perhaps be your first choice when you mean in the manner of a master..."

That said, David Foster Wallace's essay remains a masterly exegesis on the subject of English usage and is highly recommended for Sunday afternoon perusal with a glass of assertive, but never masterful, Shiraz.

Should Have Seen That Coming

An Enormity of Enormous Proportions

In today's "Dear Prudence" advice column on Slate, Prudie counsels a young woman who's having difficulty relating to a father who has been incapacitated by a stroke. She reminds the letter-writer to offer support to her mother as well:

Being a caretaker is arduous work, made all the harder by the enormity of your father's losses. 

Here we find one of the more common word mis-usages. Enormity does not refer to amplitude. Rather, it denotes, to quote the American Heritage Dictionary, "a monstrous offense or evil; an outrage." So, to be accurate, we can speak of the enormity of the injustice that occurred when Ben Affleck was awarded an Oscar. But we can only bemoan the enormousness of the pain the movie-going public has been subjected to by his performances.

The Writing on the Wall

I enjoyed an unexceptional yet memorable evening with the kids on Friday: a stroll through the park, a visit to the video store to select the night's entertainment, and a lively and messy dinner at the local pizza parlor. On the way back we stopped at the playground adjacent to our home, where Abby pretended to be a brown and white terrier named Frisky who liked to fetch sticks and run up slides, while Sam repeatedly--and with spectacular windmilling of the arms--fell and concussed himself on the various steel appendages of the playground apparatus.

It was on this very apparatus--a cube-like structure with slides and ladders and an inner fort-like enclosure--that I spotted this graffito:

As a parent, I have to say I found this disturbing. I don't want my kids exposed to such sloppy disregard for punctuation. I mean, if the author here is exhorting said bitches to smoke weed (as he undoubtedly is) the correct phrasing would require a comma: "smoke weed, bitches." As it stands here, the message could be construed as an attempt at guerilla marketing--an imperative request to smoke a brand called "weed bitches." Unlikely, I grant you, but when one is trying to persuade bitches of one's credibility vis-a-vis the smoking of weed, one needs to be precise.

Where They Keep the Litrature

Seam Stress

One of the disadvantages of sharing a body shape with Barney Rubble is, as you would expect, buying clothes. Last weekend I saw a shirt that caught my fancy--a loose, linen number that I imagined would make me look stylishly casual and artistic, like Pablo Picasso in an outdoor cafe. But the only size that would accommodate my ample rotundity draped down to my knees. That's how I ended up delivering myself and my new purchase to a neighborhood establishment that bills itself as:

Classe* Dressmaking Shoppe

Nothing technically wrong with that, I suppose. But you have to admit it's incongruous: a humble dry cleaning and alterations enterprise in a Canadian suburb, run by a family of Asians, with a name that evokes elements of French haute couture design enlivened with a dash of Ye Olde English quaintness.

Inside, I was led past the front counter into the bowels of the operation--a grimy, dimly lit workhouse populated by a couple of stooped and wizened old women who didn't look up from their sewing machines. In that sense, there was some Olde English authenticity, in a dispiriting, Dickensian sort of way. I was wordlessly guided to the "changing room"--a corner of the dungeon draped off with a sooty green curtain--which I shared with a dust ball the size of a gopher's head, before coming out to have my shirt pinned as I stood in front of a cracked, grease-spotted mirror. Classe**, indeed.

The final insult was that the bill for alterations exceeded the initial cost of the shirt, and now I'm not even so sure I like it that much after all. It makes me look like Barney Rubble trying to look like Pablo Picasso in an outdoor cafe.

*Blogger will not allow me to use an accent over the e, as it is rendered in the original. You'll just have to imagine one.

**Or print this out and draw it in.

The Forbidden Past

Here's another questionable caption--this time from the deliciously addictive time-waster website, Awkward Family Photos*:

Nobody forbid these two to marry, but they decided to poison themselves anyway.

At first I read that opening clause as an imperative (as in, "Don't anybody try to forbid these two...") but it soon becomes obvious that the past tense is what we're going for here, in which case the word should be forbade.

And how should one pronounce forbade? Well, if one has in one's en suite library, on a shelf just above the commode, a copy of The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, by the curmudgeonly and finicky Charles Harrington Elster, one could find this exegesis within:

The spelling pronunciation fur-BAYD has flourished since Webster 3 (1961), in opposition to all previous authority, arbitrarily indicated forbade should be pronounced fur-BAYD...Burchfield, in a peculiar burst of unsubstantiated permissiveness, claims that fur-BAYD "cannot be said to be wrong"; nevertheless, other recent authorities prefer the traditional fur-BAD and current dictionaries list it first.

 So there you have it: fur-BAD is the preferred way to say it, unless you're one of those loosey-goosey linguistic faddists. But wait a minute! Further on in the entry, Elster writes:

The controversy may soon be academic: the evidence of my ears says that forbid is fast replacing forbade as the past tense of forbid.

  WTF? You mean the caption may have it right (or at least acceptable to some standards), after all? I checked around, and indeed some dictionaries appear to sanction the use of forbid in the past tense. I'm afraid I'm going to have to overturn that decision, on the grounds that there is a useful distinction to be made, as indicated by my initial confusion, noted above. That's right--I hereby forbid the use of forbid in past tense contexts. You are, of course, free to appeal my ruling to a higher authority, but until then, court is adjourned.

*Check out their recent collection of  horrendous pictures from the '80s and just try not to squirm as you remember the photographic evidence of your own pastel-shaded, big-haired past.

A Recipe for Disaster

Today's selection comes from a HuffPo slide show of funny corrections. As we all know now, "due to" is used incorrectly in this correction (in fact, we can dispose of the whole "due to" clause entirely and achieve greater brevity and clarity). But the bigger issue, to my mind, is recognizing cilantro as a foodstuff. Cilantro is a vile, odious creation of the devil. It is, as I believe I have said before, the Charles Manson of garnishes: small but devious, and it murders anything it comes into contact with. 

I would rather have the cement.

Stone-Faced

Look, I'm not proud of this, OK? But who among us hasn't had the experience of idly trawling the webosphere, mindlessly clicking links, and inexplicably ending up in some louche (and irresistably compelling) corner of cyberspace? In other words, I don't remember how I arrived at this slide show of "When Stars Have a Bad Day"--let's just say I was doing research and leave it at that--but I could not look away once I got there.

Among the photos of the stars and their cellulite and bunions was this snap of Sharon Stone with an accompanying caption.

Sharon Stone's eyes looked bruised as she shopped in Beverly Hills, Calif., Jan. 21, 2010. She wore a fedora and sunglasses that she eventually took off to conceal her dark eyes.

Remember when we covered the whole "that vs which," "restrictive vs non-restrictive clause" conundrum? Neither do I, really. Not in detail, anyway. But in any case, the above is an example of how a misplaced that  can sabotage the intended meaning of a sentence.

Obviously, one does not take off sunglasses to conceal one's eyes, but that's what this caption appears to be saying. If we throw in a couple of commas, however, and have which tap that on the shoulder and take its place, we get: "She wore a fedora and sunglasses, which she eventually took off, to conceal her dark eyes." The fact that she took the glasses off becomes parenthetical (and it explains why she is bare-faced in the picture) while the logical integrity of the sentence is preserved. That way, we gossip-loving voyeurs understand that she had been wearing sunglasses to cover her hideous, probably post-plastic-surgery bruising.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to passing judgments on hotornot.com.

No, It's Not Margaret Atwood

I took my daughter, Abby, to the local dollar store on the weekend because her birthday party is coming up and she needed to select some undoubtedly toxic, probably child-labor-produced gewgaws to put in the goody bags her friends will take home. It seems to me that when I was a freckle-faced urchin the only thing I took home from friends' birthday parties was gastric distress from slurping back too many root beer floats, but nowadays one is judged on the value and creativity of one's birthday goody bags, and I didn't want to disappoint.

For that matter, I can recall receiving as a birthday gift from Claus Heckerott a used Hardy Boys book in a brown paper lunch bag that had been festively stapled and scotch-taped. Compare that with Abby's haul from last year's 6th birthday bun-toss, where she was bestowed with pink plastic merchandise commensurate with the gross national product of Brazil, and you begin to see the depth of my resentment for my offspring.

I digress. 

On the way out of the store I discovered the stationery aisle, which I navigated with all the temperance of Lindsay Lohan at a Mardi Gras parade. Steno pads, notebooks, retractable (!) felt tip pens, tape dispensers, and, finally, this...

It is actually a violation of the Sic List constitution to mock examples of "Chinglish"--too easy, too unsporting--but I couldn't pass this up. I didn't really need a writing board. But a "writting broad," with photos of a writting broad in action? Best 99 cents I ever spent.

Looking for a Verbal Dominatrix

For Sale: Perfection (slight apostrophe damage)

And they're not prepared to pay it.

Who's Your Daddy?

The Vancouver Sun has a story by Peter Birnie on playwright Kevin Loring, whose play is running in town. In the opening sentences, we find this:

When the award-winning playwright telephones to talk about a remount of Where the Blood Mixes, opening tonight at the Firehall Arts Centre, he's busy babysitting 13-month-old daughter Jade Winter.

 Maybe, as a househusband/writer, I'm oversensitive to this sort of thing, but riddle me this: if Birnie was talking to a female playwright who happened to be home with her daughter, would he say she was "babysitting?"

On a recent neighborhood excursion with my 6-year-old daughter and 16-month-old son, I collected no less than three examples of this form of subtle sexism--interestingly enough, all from women.

"Mommy has the day off today, eh?" says the kindly old fossil we pass on the street, as I yell at Abby to stop at the curb while picking up Sam's jettisoned sippy cup from the sidewalk.

"Got stuck babysitting today, I see," says the cashier at the Safeway, as I pull unauthorized chocolate bars out of Abby's grip while wiping Sam's nose with his sleeve.

"Is Daddy taking care of you guys today? Where's Mommy?" enquires the hairstylist who trims Abby's locks, while I spin Sam around in an adjacent chair until his eyeballs roll independently.

"Actually, their mother is dead--rodeo accident," I say.

I didn't really say that. But come on, people! Is it really that unusual for a dad to tend to his kids? I suppose I could look at it another way and be gratified that the bar is set so low for fathers that even the most banal (and marginally successful) acts of solo parental supervision are cause for comment. But I can't help feeling rankled at the condescension. I'm not a babysitter, dammit. This is just another example of the oppression and discrimination that the middle-aged white man has had to deal with throughout history.

We've Heard it All Before

I'm enjoying David Eddie's book, Housebroken: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad. My copy is an old uncorrected proof of the 1999 release that I've had lying around for years. Now that I am, like its author, a bona fide househusband and part-time freelancer, I felt now was the time to crack its flimsy cardboard spine.

A good read it is, too. But that won't stop me from picking a few nits. On page 115, for instance, Eddie describes an ill-fated job interview for a position he really didn't want. It begins:

I passed the first round of interviews with flying colors, talking a blue streak until they gave me the green light to see the silver-haired honcho.

I haven't seen a parade of cliches like that since...well, since last night's Olympic closing ceremonies (I mean, really--inflatable Mounties and beavers? Hockey players and lumberjacks? Why not just douse the crowd with maple syrup, eh?). But maybe it's intentional, you say--the author here is playing off the first cliche of "flying colors" with the "blue streak, green light, silver-haired" combo. I'm not so sure. A few pages later, we have this:

If I have one Achilles' heel, though, it's that I wouldn't mind being part of London's "smart set," rubbing shoulders, clinking glasses and trading bon mots through bad teeth with various brilliant characters like Martin Amis. I don't know, Martin Amis would probably avoid me like the plague, but this was my boyish dream.

Obviously, Eddie's world is a place where people suffer from Achilles' heels, shoulders are rubbed and people avoid others like the plague. This, in combination with the colorful sample above, compels me to accuse him of reckless cliche-mongering. The final irony here being that Martin Amis is the author of the critical manifesto, The War Against Cliche.